29 December, 2008

Multiplicity explores the development of prints and multiples in art from the 1960s through to the current day. Drawing on the permanent collections of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney and the University of Wollongong, the exhibition tracks the history of innovative prints, photographs and objects, from the studio-made to limited editions and the mass-produced, which have been at the core of contemporary art practice. Multiplicity features the work of artists including Andy Warhol, Ed Ruscha, Joseph Beuys, Redback Graphix, Deborah Kelly, Fiona Hall, Ricky Swallow and others.

The Blanton Museum of Art at The University of Texas at Austin is pleased to present The New York Graphic Workshop: 1964 – 1970, the first comprehensive presentation of a crucial, yet little-known episode in the history of American and Latin American Conceptual art. The Blanton is recognized as a leader in the scholarship and presentation of Latin American art, and building on the museum's 2007 exhibition, The Geometry of Hope, this exhibition further explores the contributions of Latin American artists to the modern and contemporary art historical narrative.

The exhibition examines the Conceptualist movement of the 1960s and '70s through the printmaking practices of the New York Graphic Workshop (NYGW). Founded in 1965 by three young Latin American artists in New York—Luis Camnitzer, José Guillermo Castillo, and Liliana Porter—the group's mission was to redefine the practice of printmaking, focusing on its mechanical and repetitive nature as opposed to its traditional techniques and aesthetics. Moreover, the group employed radical printmaking practices—printing, for example, on the side of a ream of paper- exploring the idea of what actually constitutes a print. The NYGW examined the ideas and conceptual meaning behind printmaking, and sought to utilize the medium in both alternative and accessible ways. As stated in the artists' first manifesto, "The printing industry prints on bottles, boxes, electronic circuits, etc. Printmakers, however, continue to make prints with the same elements used by [Albrecht] Dürer. The act of printing in editions, the act of publishing, is more important than the work carried out on a printing plate."

In the 1960s, The New York Graphic Workshop established a cooperative space that promoted an exchange of ideas between artists and served as a collective center for professional printmakers to teach, exhibit and experiment. One of the most interesting aspects of the NYGW was its unusual printmaking practices, and means of presenting new artworks—holding exhibitions by mail, distributing a cookie as a multiple, exhibiting in a safe deposit box on 57th Street and announcing a non-existent exhibition as part of Information, a show at the Museum of Modern Art in 1970.

Showcasing over 70 prints, drawings and mixed media works, The New York Graphic Workshop: 1964 -1970, examines the philosophies of the group's founders and explore the theoretical possibilities of printmaking through examples by Camnitzer, Castillo and Porter, along with leading contemporary artists of the period—Max Neuhaus, José Luis Cuevas and Salvador Dalí—whose works were produced by the Workshop on the artists' behalf. On view in the Blanton's Butler Gallery on the first floor, the exhibition design and installation reflects the mission of the NYGW.

22 December, 2008

Four Corners explores these two ends of the art industry – the big money auction rooms and the production chain of Aboriginal art – and finds both open to abuse.

Art for Art's Sake? Reporter: Quentin McDermott Broadcast: 28/07/2008

What is the public supposed to make of it when an auction room owner buys a painting, sells it, buys it again and then re-sells it - all through his own auction room? Or when an artist's value suddenly hits the stratosphere for no apparent reason? Or when an auctioneer plucks out false bids – a practice now regulated in the real estate trade? Most members of the public – derided by some in the trade as "wood ducks" for their naïveté – are supposed to neither know nor care.

The RealTime website offers a comprehensive view of Australian contemporary art with an international perspective, combining the current print edition of RealTime, online exclusives and updates; the RealTime archive (currently under development); new works on show in our studio; featured events (forums, festivals) and arts issues; and a portal that will guide you to the best sites in innovative contemporary art.

===========The Australian Art Sales Digest is a database of past auction results of over 300,000 works by more than 11,400 artists who have either lived or worked in Australia or New Zealand, offered for sale in Australia and New Zealand over the last thirty-five years. Our data covers over 1,500 auction sales from over 50 auction houses, and extends back to the early 1970s.

is a non-profit organisation based in Durban, South Africa which specialises in producing fine art print portfolios, exhibitions, billboards and research projects that advocate various human rights issues in South Africa and internationally. The Art for Humanity website serves as an online resource for those interested in human rights, art and social development.Click on link to view theAFH Blog.

AFH and partners have invited 25 women artists and 25 poets primarily from South Africa and the developing world, but also from the international community, to create art and poetry with the intention to inspire moral ownership of the rights of the child. We aim for each poem to be translated into any other South African language, to promote multilingualism and diversity.

14 December, 2008

Tango with Cows takes its title from a book and poem by the Russian avant-garde poet Vasily Kamensky. The absurd image of farm animals dancing the tango evokes the clash in Russia between a primarily rural culture and a growing urban life. During the years spanning the revolutions of 1905 and 1917, Russia was in spiritual, social, and cultural crisis. The moral devastation of the failed 1905 revolution, the famines of 1911, the rapid influx of new technologies, and the outbreak of World War I led to disillusionment with modernity and a presentiment of apocalypse.

This exhibition explores the way Russian avant-garde poets and artists responded to this crisis through their book art. Often working collaboratively, poets and artists designed pages in which rubber-stamped zaum' or "transrational" poetry shared space with archaic and modern scripts, as well as with primitive and abstract imagery. The Russian avant-garde utilized such verbal and visual disruptions to convey humor, parody and an ambivalence about Russia's past, present, and future.

13 December, 2008

Print, Perception and the Artist’s InterventionOctober 30 - December 13Curated by Michelle Levy

EFA Project Space presents Beyond A Memorable Fancy, an exhibition about print, perception, and artistic intervention.Focusing on the transformative aspects of printmaking, Beyond a Memorable Fancy explores the current trend of artists experimenting with print techniques in order to appropriate and manipulate information—be it from text or image sources, cultural symbols, or nature. The art in the exhibition spans a range of unconventional formats, including experimental film, laser stencil graffiti, vinyl signage, cast shadows, and boat-making paraphernalia. Even the more common print techniques present are used to achieve an unexpected result.

Operating nationally and globally for two decades, ANAT has been delivering initiatives which enable connection, collaboration, research and development, fostering enterprise, sustainability, dialogue and exchange across art, culture, science and technology.

By creating opportunities for enrichment & inspiration, ANAT supports emerging and established artists in the fields of media and hybrid arts, networked and distributed practices, sound and performance to develop new concepts and work. The majority of Australia’s prominent media artists, curators and producers have benefited from ANAT’s innovative programs.

11 December, 2008

Women's Studio Workshop was founded in 1974 by four women artists, Ann Kalmbach, Tatana Kellner, Anita Wetzel, and Barbara Leoff Burge. They were committed to developing an alternative space for artists to create new work and share skills. Programs were centered on the artistic process and often informed by feminist values. In the early years, the studios were located in a two-story single-family house. Etching was in the living room, papermaking was in the attic, and screen printing was in the basement. Public programming included a regular workshop series, as well as special programs that featured the work of women artists. Women's Work in Film and Video, a long-standing series of topical films made by women film makers, and Outskirts, a series of 2-dimensional art exhibits, were initiated in 1976. These seasonal series were housed alternately at bars, dance studios or libraries—any place where we could access a new audience. The intention was to exhibit the work of women artists as well as provide professional experiences for the artists themselveshttp://www.wsworkshop.org/_about/history.htm

Philagrafika was originally known as the Philadelphia Print Collaborative. Founded in 2000, the Print Collaborative came together in recognition of a growing convergence in Philadelphia of artists, educators, curators, non-profit arts organizations, galleries, print workshops and museums that needed a central organizing body for cooperative initiatives.

10 December, 2008

The Collections Council launched the Collaborative Projects Showcase on 18 November 2008.

The Showcase promotes projects run collaboratively by collecting organisations in Australia such as archives, galleries, historical societies, Indigenous keeping places, libraries and museums.

The aim of the Showcase is to inform and inspire people who are considering their own collaborative project. It also provides an opportunity for organisations within the collections sector to share their experiences. It will evolve over time, expanding to represent the wide variety of collaborations that are developing across the collections sector.

Spaces of ArtAn international conference on institutional / post-institutional curatorial and related practices in contemporary artConvenors: Reuben Keehan and Blair French

In April 2009 Artspace will bring together key figures in current debates on institutional / post-institutional practices in contemporary art from Asia, Europe, North America, Australia and New Zealand in a two and half day conference at Artspace and the Art Gallery of New South Wales.

Within recent curatorial debates, the term ‘new institutionalism’ has described a tendency toward the incorporation of the principles of institutional critique into institutional practice. Particularly visible in Europe, the new institutionalism has its origins of the shift of key independent curators into directorial roles in the late 1990s, but also in the perceived need for galleries and museums to provide a more sympathetic platform for the increasingly participatory, process-based and self-reflexive practices of contemporary art. With its emphasis on transience, open-endedness and social experiment, and its placement of discursive activities such as education and publishing on equal footing with the more conventional exhibition function of galleries, the new institutionalism draws as much from the working methods of artist-run initiatives as it does from social and cultural theory.

The past few years have seen this tendency widely discussed and just as widely critiqued, resulting in emergent discourses that might be characterised as ‘post-institutional’. Rather than simply rehearsing these accounts of the new institutionalism, however, Spaces of Art will instead seek to use it as the platform from which a series of questions about current institutional practices may be asked at three overlapping levels—globally, regionally and locally—with a specific focus on their potential to inform artistic and curatorial strategies in Australia and the Asia-Pacific.

06 December, 2008

The show is based on the iconic "Mount Gibraltar" which separates and defines the two towns of Mittagong and Bowral in the Southern Highlands of New South Wales.

My work for “The Gib” exhibition continues my interest in ‘markers’ or features that define the landscape and the possibilities of alternative surfaces for drawing which connect with the subject at hand. The white ink drawings on varnished local “Gib Trachyte” stone follow through with this idea. The large scale etching “ Gib N.W. Face” in common with my previous ‘Location’ works, borrows the contour lines from topographic maps of the landscape. In this work the closely gathered contour lines from the map of the Gib are gouged into the etching plate, printing as drypoint marks in the deep shadow areas of the image. In essence the map is drawn back into the landscape.

Tony Ameneiro is an artist and educator who uses both drawing and printmaking to develop and extend his ideas and images. His work reveals a sense of condensed observation with references to art history and is executed with great attention to detail. In series such as LOCATION and PARK EDGE, there is often a focus on symbols of place and the layering of culture and geography. Some of the more recent prints combine colour multi-plate printing and chine collé techniques, overlapping ideas and images with the use of Japanese papers and tissues.

Twice chosen by the Print Council of Australia as their commissioned print artist, and winner of the 2007 Fremantle Print Award, his prints are held in several State and Regional Gallery collections including the Art Gallery of New South Wales, the Queensland Art Gallery, the Art Gallery of South Australia and the State Library of Victoria.

05 December, 2008

The Australian Federal Government is pushing forward with a plan to force Internet Service Providers [ISPs] to censor the Internet for all Australians. This plan will waste tens of millions of taxpayer dollars and slow down Internet access.

Despite being almost universally condemned by the public, ISPs, State Governments, Media and censorship experts, Communications Minister Stephen Conroy is determined to force this filter into your home.

ANAT is partnering with GetUp to prevent the Australian Government's proposed internet censoring scheme.

GetUp's 'Save the Net' campaign is gaining momentum faster than allexpectations, as the Government's ill-considered plans to slow down and censor the internet is facing backlash from communities and organisations - it has even been slammed by children's welfare groups, who say the filter is "fundamentally flawed" and simply will not work.

ANAT's Executive Director Dr Melinda Rackham comments "Australia's creative content and intellectual property is at risk if the Government implements this flawed and undeveloped scheme. ANAT urges all Australians to take a stand by signing this petition".

Only a massive public outcry will make the Government see sense on this issue. That's why we're taking a moment to ask you help build an unprecedented community movement to save the internet from being slowed and censored.

Without an immense reaction from the community, the Government will claim they have the green light to begin limiting our freedoms - and who knows where that slippery slope will end? Already euthanasia, gambling, anorexia and legal adult content are being discussed.

Be part of the solution by letting your friends know about this campaign, and ask them to join you, children's welfare groups, internet providers, consumers, engineers, network administrators, and 55,000 everyday Australians in defense of our freedom and in defence of our internet:www.getup.org.au/campaign/SaveTheNet&id=463

Help build a movement today in defence of our rights, to prevent Australia joining Iran, China, Saudi Arabia and Burma in an undemocratic club of governments who view the internet as a threat.

Thanks for being part of the solution, ANAT and the team at GetUp

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ANAT is assisted by the Australian Government through the AustraliaCouncil http://www.ozco.gov.au its arts funding and advisory body, bythe South Australian Government through Arts SAhttp://www.arts.sa.gov.au and the Visual Arts and Craft Strategy, aninitiative of the Australian, State and Territory Governments.